The Dying Submariner (Amalgamation, Codicil and Appendix)

Tracklist & Samples

Description:

LP version. Aptly subtitled "A Concerto For Piano And Reverberation In Four Movements", The Dying Submariner is a hypnotically simple album from occasional Nurse With Wound collaborator Andrew Liles. While there is no spoken narrative, the sequence of events is perfectly clear: the nautical protagonist finds his bathysphere cast free from its tether to the surface world, and eventually plunges into the ocean's depths. Liles guides this grim tale through numerous different moods, using polyphonous tone clusters and arpeggiated hammerings to connote the shift from dreamy weightlessness into noirish tension, slowly pushing towards a forbidding chill. The final piano notes of the album emerge from cavernous reverb and leaden sustain, both curiously playful and drunkenly stumbling - a comedic twist of fate for the luckless submariner, or his final thoughts flashing before his eyes as he nears his demise? Jim Haynes